James Franco's NYU professor fired for giving actor a bad grade?

2011/12/20

NSFW
Former New York University professor Jose Angel Santana is suing NYU, claiming he was fired for giving James Franco a "D" for skipping class. The ticked-off teacher claims Franco missed 12 out of 14 meetings of Tish School for the Arts course Directing the Actor II.Santana lashed out at NYU for creating, what he called, a "Franco-friendly environment," in which high-profile students are permitted to effectively buy their degrees without having to do the work. He alleges Franco, an Academy Award-nominated actor, didn't take his other courses seriously, but professors passed him anyway because of his celebrity status.

Known for such films as 127 Hours and Rise of the Planet of the Apes, Franco has gone back to school to pursue graduate programs in film and writing. He has already earned master's degrees from NYU, Columbia and Brooklyn College and is pursuing a doctorate from Yale. Accusations of academic slacking have long haunted Franco in the tabloids, with a candid photo of Franco sleeping through a lecture in 2009 as the most publicized piece of evidence.

Despite rumors of lackluster performance as a student, Franco has gone on to teach courses of his own. He made headlines early this year when he partnered with Columbia College Hollywood to create a film editing course in which students spliced footage from his own body of work called Master Class: Editing James Franco ... with James Franco.

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